I went to a few of the Podcamp Boston 2007 sessions on Saturday afternoon and I was surprised to see how much of the crowd was not into Podcasting. When asked for a show of hands, it seemed the majority of folks there were active bloggers but did not actually post original audio or video on their blogs. Though the economics of blogging is not one-to-one with podcasting, the conference offered up some insights into monetizing online content.
Paul Kontonis, CEO/Founder of For Your Imagination, gave an interesting presentation entitled Monetizing Your Web Series/Podcast. For Your Imagination (FYI) is a video production company that creates original and professional quality content. Since it's founding in November 2006, FYI has spent $700,000 and earned $400,000 from its various means of monetization. Though FYI is currently losing money, the IPTV market is looking at considerable growth over the next several years as consumers have begun to adapt to the idea of watching TV shows online.
Paul's presentation addressed the ways in which his company has attempted to monetize its video content/audience and I have summarized the findings below:
- Advertising
- Banner Ads
- Average CTR (Click-thru-Rate) for a flash banner ad located at the top of a webpage is only .25-.3% Very much due to the Banner Blindness affect.
- Interestingly, Feedburner ads on an RSS feed have an average of 3-4% CTR and therefore, banner ads could be leveraged better if placed primarily within feeds.
- Banner ads yield an average of $1 - $2 eCRM (Ad revenue generated by 1000 actual click-thrus on an ad) for a general web audience. Niche markets can fetch higher eCRM (ex. $23 for the Business School audience: 26-33 year old, college educated, finance background).
- Video Ads
- Stand alone video ads yield an average eCRM of $2 - $3
- Banner Ads
- Sponsorship
- To make money on sponsorship, a web property must either have a massive audience(200,000+ unique visitors/month) or a good size niche audience (50,000+ for potential Business School candidates).
- Product/Company sponsorship typically pays $40 - $120 eCRM.
- Merchandise
- .1% of For Your Information visitors actually buy the site's branded merchandise. For instance, Patrice O'neals Web Show has sold 70 pairs of branded panties! The average customer purchases $4 worth of merchandise off the site.
- Resources for creating Branded merchandise: Cafepress, zazzle, and CreateSpace.
- Ideas for Products: DVD's, Tshirts, Posters, Buttons, Thongs, Buttons, Coffee, Mugs, ect...
- Set up an Amazon affiliate program. Visitors will be more likely to buy your merchandise if they associate your brand with a reputable online merchant.
- Licensing
- Since FYI is a video production company, the figures they provided do not correlate to blogging.
- $2k - $5k per episode should a web show be picked up by Showtime, HBO, or another major cable channel.
- Franchising
- Deals for a cable channel buying the right to your video content can range from $250k - $5 million.
For more information on the Monetizing Your Web Series/Podcast presentation, check out Lori Magno's write up.